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Wednesday, January 04, 2012

You Had Us At “Dana Precious Wrote A Novel”

Dear Edwina,

So, a former marketing executive at Sony, Dana Precious, wrote a novel called BORN UNDER A LUCKY MOON. At Sony, she worked under Josh Goldstine, who is now the head of marketing at Universal.Here is the cover of Dana's book...And here is the onesheet for a new Universal movie...Coincidence?

If you can’t judge a book by its cover, then it stands to reason that you can’t judge a movie by its poster.

At least that would have been our conclusion had not another one of our readers found Ms. Precious’ own blow-by-blow account of how the cover art was created by her husband Martin Gueulette and photographer Pete Tangen.

"That was my job. I’m an executive at a major film studio, Oxford Pictures, and I handle the advertising.

This means I head up teams of people to create the movie trailers,television spots, and posters. I was in the middle of a photo shoot for Oxford Pictures’Heaven Is in the Wind. It was a dog of a film and we all knew it. I could just see the review headlines now: “it blows.” But that didn’t matter. Opening weekend of a picture is the marketing ex-ecutive’s responsibility. After that, it stands or stumbles on its own merits. But an audience initially goes to a film based on the avertising and publicity. So while I didn’t make the films, it was my job to sell them to an unsuspecting public.
Right now, I was attempting to get photos of the damn star, Nikki Strong, so we could create a poster. And, as usual, Nikki
Strong was not cooperating."

Hi all, Dana Precious here.
Personally, I think this is hilarious. A friendly shout out to Universal as imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
oh, and to the person who wrote about mallets and cheese -- neither are in my book.
and to the person who wrote about 'riveting prose' -- all 5 star reviews on amazon and barnes and noble must mean something. :)
Yours, in the wild and wooly world of film marketing -- Dana

The film rights for the book have been optioned by Janet and Jerry Zucker of Zucker Productions (My Best Friend’s Wedding, Fair Game) and Jesse Kennedy of Aurelius Films, with Randi Singer (Mrs. Doubtfire and the upcoming Topper, starring Steve Martin) attached as screenwriter.